Friday, April 18, 2014

A Sleeping Empire Awakes

The Northward Migration of the Majority is an interesting series of animated heat maps showing the movements of the inhabitants and workers in three Chinese cities. The three maps visualize the patterns of population movement in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou over a 24 hour period.

The Beijing animation includes an inset map that displays a number of highlights of significant moments during the day. The inset shows a zoomed in map of locations that see increased numbers of people at specific moments during the day. These include transport hubs during rush hour and business centers during working hours.

Each of the animated heat map layers are overlaid on top of a Baidu map of the city. There is no information on where the population data comes from, however the only link on the page is to the mobile version of Baidu maps so I suspect the data may come from mobile phone tracking.